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Well, I can’t live in denial any longer: the end of my sabbatical is fast approaching.
In two weeks I begin teaching four courses, five days a week, chairing a search committee, attending numerous meetings, and re-immersing myself in campus politics.

With record enrollments this Fall, we've added unprecedented numbers of new sections. That means we've hired dozens of new adjuncts, and given returning adjuncts as many courses as our policy allows.
But we haven't added any new staff. And they're gonna feel it.

My household is a bit disrupted this month with a visit from my sister and her family. These get-togethers are rare since they live thousands of miles away in Europe, where my sister and her husband are both professional musicians. We treasure this time when the cousins can spend the days in one long, extended play date, while the grown-ups eat great meals and sample one bottle of wine after another, simply enjoying each other’s company.

So a funny thing happened on the way to summer: I sat down to start writing a book, and when I looked up, summer was over. And my couch has a big indentation in it.
Also: My brain hurts. Ouch.
But I met my deadline, and that, as our friend Forrest says, is all I have to say about that.

I write, not from the dead, but from the depths, that murky blob marked library on your campus map, that innocent but somehow chilling link on your institution’s home page, that awkward corner of uncertainty in your otherwise confident professional psyche. Nothing else inside higher ed both unites and repels in quite the same way: everyone seeks information — which is simply the recorded experience and advice of our forebears — yet everyone trembles when they venture beyond the few narrow paths they already know. The campus library is the Great Grimpen Mire of academe.

I &*%#(%*& hate parking.
There is no obvious, elegant way to handle a sudden influx of students when parking is already tight.
The two iron laws of parking:
1. There is never enough.
2. Thou shalt not add parking, anywhere, ever.
Corrolary: Calling attention to the contradiction between 1 and 2 is bad form.

Commiserating with an administrative colleague at another college, I discovered that we're both dealing with the same issue. I call it input without content.
With budgetary issues looking like they'll get worse before they get better -- public higher ed usually lags economic recoveries -- the campus is abuzz with concerns about possible cuts and budget-driven decisions. The laws of economic gravity being what they are, there's simply no way to take the kinds of cuts to appropriations we're taking and not feel them. So we have to make some decisions about how to handle them.

Sometimes, the world is just trying to tell me something. Occasionally, I get the message.
First, I read yesterday's excellent "Momma PhD" post by Susan O'Doherty, which spoke to her own realization of her earlier presumption of privilege.

One of the people on campus I talk to fairly regularly works at Greenback's main library. I'm not sure whether there's a specific reason for it or not, but the library staff seems to be more enthusiastic about sustainability than are the employees of just about any other department.

No Woman Is an Island, Part 3 (The last one, I promise): The Privilege of Not Recognizing Privilege
A friend responded to my post of last week in a way that took me aback: “You said you were trying to educate yourself about the issues faced by non-academic university employees — but that is what you were!”